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Comment by davchana | Hacker News Reader

I love libraries.

.la is a ccTld for Laos country. I wonder why this website didn't use a .com (maybe nothing good short domain was available) or .us.

From a cursory look they look like a private non profit, so they may not have access to *.gov domains or subdomains.

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I like the "domain hack".

Their acronym is DPLA, they wanted dp.la.

Pretty simple.

Still a pretty strange choice for a site which wants "people to learn, grow, and contribute to a diverse and better-functioning society" [1], considering that Laos is a one-party communist dictatorship. Not the only weird situation surrounding that TLD though [2][3].

[1] https://dp.la/about

[2] https://www.la/about

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.la

Oof. Los Angeles, Louisiana, and Chinese / French / Italian domain name hacks.

That never stood a chance of being used for country-specific things.

I worked briefly for a company that wanted (and got, and then later abandoned) a '.sy' domain. Syria. They had to get the State Dept. involved!

Yeah... honestly I skimmed over it being Laos.

While I do like domain hacks I would never support a communist regime, which the domain rental most likely directly goes to.

I mean I agree with their choice. Its just a domain. They can use it as long as it goes. But eventually, its a ccTld of a small country, comes with its own risks. It would not be first website to change domains if anything comes up.

Your cursory look is confirmed by viewing this page which holds their charter and forms 990:

https://dp.la/about

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